One of my favorite items to put on pizza, mix into a pasta, or use as a spread is basil pesto. With very simple ingredients, basil pesto is a versatile sauce to pair with your favorite dishes.
Gardening is my mom’s forte, the lady with the green thumb as I like to call her. She’s always telling me about how relaxing and soothing gardening is. Unlike my mom, I’m not much of a gardener. I like to have plants in the house and I can take care of them, but I don’t find anything relaxing about being outdoors and digging in dirt with bugs. We have a huge garden in our backyard filled with vegetables, fruits, flowers, you name it we probably have it. One of those items is basil.
Basil has a very peppery taste to it. Its great in all sorts of cuisines such as Italian, Thai, and even maybe sometimes Indian. Today I used it in a simple pasta dish.
Ingredients for Basil Pesto:
- 1/2-1 cups Basil
- Olive Oil (add as much as needed)
- 1/4 cup of pine nuts/almonds
- 4-5 Garlic cloves
To make the pesto, I first washed the fresh basil in warm water to get rid of any bugs or dirt that might be on the leaves. I used about a 1/2-1 cup of basil. After washing the basil I put it in a blender with the garlic cloves and almonds. Traditionally basil pesto is made with pine nuts. Unfortunately I didn’t have any at home, so I used almonds instead. I added about a 1 tablespoon of water to get the blender going. After a little bit i took the top of the blender off and slowly started pouring olive oil into the blender. I poured as much olive oil as needed until the pesto was a smooth consistency.
If you don’t want to use the pesto in the below pasta, please add salt and pepper to taste.
Pairing with Pasta:
- 1 red onion
- 1 roma tomato
- salt and pepper
- oregano
- garlic powder
I paired the basil pesto with a simple pasta dish. I first caramelized the red onions. The best way to do this I’ve found is adding the onions into a pan with oil on low heat, and then adding a pinch of salt. This will sweat out the onions and help them to not burn immediately. Then I added the pesto to this pan and let out some of the raw flavors cook out. right before I was about to add the pasta to the pan, add your tomatoes. Let them cook for about a min and add your drained pasta to the pan. Add salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic powder to taste. There you have it, a simple and tasty dinner 🙂
thezenfoodie 